Pardon makes a mockery of 90% of Italian trials

More than 90% of the trials to be held in Italy over the next five years will be pointless, according to the body in charge of the Italian judiciary, because of a pardon approved by parliament earlier this year.

The pardon wiped three years off the sentence of anyone convicted of all but the most serious offences committed before it came into effect. It applied to both tried and untried cases.

In a report released yesterday, the Senior Council of Magistrates said that in the majority of cases even if the defendants were convicted in future trials, their sentences would not take effect. In Turin, 99% of all the scheduled trials were senseless, it said.

Despite this, trials are going ahead, at vast public expense. According to the report, presented to Clemente Mastella, the justice minister in Romano Prodi's centre-left government, under present law they could not be scrapped.

Among those who could benefit from the pardon are the opposition leader, Silvio Berlusconi, who faces two trials for corruption and fraud, and his former lawyer, David Mills, the estranged husband of Britain's culture secretary, Tessa Jowell. It is unlikely that, if found guilty, they would be sentenced to more than three years, so would serve no time at all.

Nearly 25,000 convicted criminals have been freed by the pardon, which was passed by parliament with support from government and opposition MPs in July. Critics argue that the simultaneous release of so many offenders is behind a surge in killings in the south, particularly Naples.

It emerged that Mr Prodi's own interior minister had expressed doubts about the pardon, which polls suggest is deeply unpopular. In an interview, Giuliano Amato said he had accepted parliament's decision "not without misgivings".

A cabinet colleague and former top prosecutor, Antonio di Pietro, who opposed the pardon, was blunter. "Italy has slipped into a state of illegality," he said. "The rule of law is in jeopardy."

The pardon was presented as a way of reducing overcrowding in Italy's jails, where more than 61,000 prisoners were occupying cells designed to take 42,000. But Mr Di Pietro claimed it was really an "agreement between the government and opposition to resolve the murky affairs of people close to them".

The centre-left mayor of Bari, Michele Emiliano, said the pardon had reversed "15 years of success [in the fight] against organised crime" in the south-east.